President Barack Obama visited the Nike Headquarters in Oregon today. His main agenda included his desire to assist in accelerating advanced manufacturing. Obama seeks to cut down the tariffs for overseas trading in manufacturing so that the development and processes can keep improving.
Nike has already been doing these things for years but with the tariffs being lowered, it will allow for companies such as Nike to continue to save more money by cutting costs of domestic labor and to produce even more. With Obama backing Nike as the face of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that would improve political relations. What does that spell for the the U.S? By already exporting a lot of the labor out to other countries, the U.S is already hurting due to unemployment and the struggling economy.
Companies like New Balance will be hurt by this plan. Why? Well New Balance will have every right to be angry because they pride on their U.S made goods. The tariffs were really the only thing keeping New Balance competitive. They already don’t control a lot of the market share like Nike or adidas so this will further hurt their productions and the many Americans they employ. New Balance will have no choice but to move productions overseas as well. Granted if you look at the bigger picture, President Obama’s plans will work.
In recent years, we’ve already seen a huge decline of their quality control as it is. If Nike were to continually add more numbers to their production schedules it’ll be that much harder to control the quality of the products. We as the consumers are really the ones losing out here. Like previously stated, if you look at the bigger picture the plan could work but in the meantime if all goes through there were be a lot of suffering, but who knows only time will tell if it’ll be a success or not. Share your thoughts with us on Twitter!
Source: Huffington Post
